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Graduate and Early Career Committee

Established: In May 1995 as the Task Force on Graduate Education, re-authorized for an additional three-year term in May 1999, made permanent in January 2002 as Committee for Graduate Students, renamed the Graduate and Early Career Committee in 2008.

Purpose: The Graduate and Early Career Committee provides a voice within the Association for graduate students and historians early in their careers, and serves as a venue to discuss issues of concern and interest to students and early career professionals. The mission of the Committee is:

To serve as the point of contact for graduate student members in order to articulate their concerns and interests to the larger membership and governing bodies of the AHA.

To advocate for inclusion of graduate students as vital participants in debates concerning the course of the profession and the practice of history.

To support the rights of graduate student teachers who seek to improve the circumstances of their work environment at their respective institutions.

To work with other committees and divisions of the AHA to facilitate their understanding of the changing needs of graduate students and to help them and individual departments in an advisory capacity to carry out initiatives that directly or indirectly affect graduate education.

Previous and ongoing responsibilities include recruiting graduate students members in the AHA, as a means to adequately represent graduate students and to instill professionalism; organizing sessions on topics of concern to graduate students and sponsoring a Graduate Student Forum and reception at the AHA annual meeting; and surveying AHA graduate members and presenting concerns of graduate students to the Council and divisions of the AHA.

Membership: 5 members. The committee is composed of a representative from the Council and four graduate student or early career appointments, made by the Committee on Committees.

Assignment to Division: None. Reports on its work directly to the Council.